Senator BROWN (11:16 AM) —We are dealing with the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 1998-99 , Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 1998-99 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 1998-99 . These are bills that allow the government to take taxpayers' money, basically, for the service of the nation. I want to home in on the entirely confused and directionless way in which the government is failing, as we go into the new century, to take Australia into the lead as the sun power nation. Australia has a terrific opportunity to become the solar power nation leading the world with the export of the technologies it already has and putting research and development funds into clean green energy.

There is a burgeoning market to our north, particularly in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where the traditional Western modes of big power stations are fraught with difficulties. If you are going to have the production of energy equally across those nations—simply because they are made up of so many islands—how much better it would be if we were able to export to them technologies which will allow the local production of energy. This would allow access for villages, local people and farmers to electricity and modes of heating water and so on. This is an enormous market which is going to grow in the next century.

At the end of 1997 we had the Prime Minister's statement `Safeguarding the future: Australia's response to climate change'. I do not think it was an initiative in the full sense of that word; it was a response to international criticism about Australia's delinquent position in not joining the rest of the world in trying to curb the production of greenhouse gases. The Prime Minister said:

Targets will be set for the inclusion of renewable energy in electricity generation by the year 2010. Electricity retailers and other large electricity buyers will be legally required to source an additional 2% of their electricity from renewable or specified waste products energy sources by 2010 (including through direct investment in alternative renewable energy sources such as solar water heaters). This will accelerate the uptake of renewable energy in grid-based power applications, and provide an ongoing base for commercially competitive renewable energy. The programme will also contribute to development of internationally competitive industries which would participate effectively in the burgeoning Asian energy market.

What the Prime Minister is saying there is basically what I have just said, and that is that Australia should be in a position to capture the burgeoning Asian market in clean green energy. But the government's actions are totally at odds with that. What the Prime Minister was announcing at that stage was that an extra two per cent of the electricity market in the future would be coming from clean green energy.

I put to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Hill, through a series of questions, that clean green energy should be solar power, as Australians understand it—in particular photovoltaic; that is, solar panels which produce electricity for lighting. If you are in the outback of Australia solar power can be used for almost all household purposes—cooking, refrigeration, television, lighting and so on.

There is also the issue of wind power. Australia's southern coastline—I know this, being a Tasmanian—lies in the path of the roaring forties. We have some of the best wind configurations, the best potential wind power situations, anywhere in the world. If this two per cent of new energy sources was to be allocated to those specific industries, it would be an enormous boost to them. They are tiny, but that two per cent allocation would ensure that their growth would allow us to capture those Asian export markets in the future. It would mean a big injection of funds into research and development so that the technology already available in Australian universities for solar power and wind power could be converted for manufacturing and domestic use.

I asked Senator Hill whether his definition of renewable energies is in fact solar power and wind power, but back came a confused answer that, if you translate it, means this government is entertaining the idea that that two per cent of so-called renewable energy could include such things as coal gas and existing solar hot water systems, not solar panels. If that is the case, we are again going to see the coal industry capturing this so-called renewable clean green energy market—the reverse of what the government is saying should happen will be happening.

I point out to the Senate that there is far more to the government's favouring of the dirty coal industry as a producer of energy—in particular, electricity in this country—and its flouting of the move towards a clean green future where global warming recedes rather than grows as a threat through the GST package. What the government is doing in that package is putting some $3 billion a year into tax rebates for the use of diesel and other fossil fuels. One particular impact of that will be a $52 million gift to diesel fuel producers in outback areas, but in particular in states like Western Australia and Queensland. Some $10 million of that will go to diesel fuel production in the Northern Territory.

It sounds all right on the face of it, but that is going to stymie the production of solar and wind based energy. It is a gift of tens of millions of dollars to the old greenhouse gas producing energies just at the time when clean solar and wind power were being able to match the price of electricity production. Just as the solar and wind power energy options are getting on their feet in this country the government comes along and gives a windfall to the old dirty power production and pulls the rug from under the competitiveness of the new energies, the sunrise energies. More than that, the GST is going to tax the production of solar cells and the components for the production of wind power. These were previously untaxed; they are now going to be taxed while the government is giving a rebate, reducing the tax, on the dirty industries. What an extraordinary situation—that this government is actually moving to destroy clean green energy production in this country, or to set it back decades at least.

The year before last, when I introduced into the Senate the sun fund bill, which would have allowed people in the bush, in particular, instead of getting the diesel fuel rebate, to have the capital to install clean green renewable energies such as solar power on their homesteads and wherever else it could replace fossil fuel produced energy, the bill foundered due to opposition from both the government and the opposition of the day, even though it was a cost neutral option. But it goes further than that. At a time when the Howard government, backed by the minister who calls himself the minister for the environment, Robert Hill, is giving over $100 million for research and development of the coal and gas industries—the fossil industries—it has abolished the Energy Research and Development Corporation, the only entity in government dedicated to funding clean green energy renewal.

This is an extraordinary situation this country has got into. This is not just blinkered thinking; this is a studied destruction of this country's enormous potential to promote business and job creation through the excellent achievements of particularly our universities but also of the private sector. Instead of giving them a boost so that they become manufacturing industries providing Australia with clean green energy and exporting that to the rest of the world, the government on a broad scale is throwing every obstruction in the way of that happening, taking hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money and putting it across to the dirty old industries.

The impact of that is going to be one of setting Australia back for decades, instead of taking the example of Denmark. In 1980 Denmark determined that it was going to become the leader of wind power production in the world. This is a little nation of five million people where the government got involved and gave capital support to the development of wind power. That country has now raised its target from having 10 per cent of electricity produced through wind power to 30 to 40 per cent of its electricity produced from wind power within the next few decades. It is exporting that wind technology to the rest of the world and has created thousands of jobs. Instead of Australia saying, `Well, we can do that with solar power,' we have a government that is destroying the solar power industry in this country, we have a government that is destroying our opportunity to join Denmark in being a leader in wind power production.

What a derelict policy. What a failure by the minister for the environment, who should be fighting to see that our clean green energy options come to the forefront. What a failure of imagination yet again from Prime Minister Howard. What a failure in cabinet to understand this option for this country and to meet with leaders in business—BP Solar and the other corporations which are involved in trying to not only produce the technology but also convert that into manufacturing. What a failure to get behind the hundreds of small producers of clean green alternatives in this country, particularly in the bush, to make sure that they are not only competitive but lead the way as we go into the next century. And what a failure to take the opportunity to create tens of thousands of jobs in clean green industries in Australia. Instead, this government is propping up the job shedding coal industry and its interests which no doubt have much more influence over what happens in the Prime Minister's office.

Some may say, `Here is another of the Greens on his feet, promoting the impossible. We have to accept circumstances as they are. We have to accept that Australia is going to continue to be seen as a polluting country and a country that will not pull its weight. We have special circumstances, as Senator Hill and Prime Minister Howard say, and we can't change that.' But we have only to look at Britain to see that it can be changed.

In the 1980s, Britain was seen as the `dirty neighbour' by the rest of Europe, particularly because of its polluting industries and the fallout from them, which was affecting the rest of Europe through the added impact it had on the killing of forests in Scandinavia and in Germany, through acid rain and particulates from industries, which we know add to the rate of cancer throughout populations. Let us look at what the British government is doing in 1999. Just last month, their Foreign Secretary—and remember that this is not even their Minister for the Environment—Robin Cook spoke to the Green Alliance at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London. He gave a speech called `Britain and the global environment', which began:

For the past week I have been commuting to and from Rambouillet, the chateau just outside Paris where the Kosovo peace talks are going on. It is easy in foreign affairs to become preoccupied with the pressing issue of the day—

And how all of us must agree with that sentiment, as the horrible in events in Kosovo are unfolding at the moment. Mr Cook went on to say:

But while we deal with the conflicts of today, it is crucial that we keep thinking about the kind of world we want to live in tomorrow.

This is foreign territory for the government of Australia. He went on to say:

If we want that world to have a healthy environment, then we have a major a challenge ahead of us. For anyone who still thinks that global warming can be treated as a side-issue here are four simple statistics. The six warmest years on record have all been since 1990. Last year was the warmest ever. Thousands of square kilometres in Britain are already at risk of flooding. A fifth of the world's population live within 30 km of the coast.

The facts are just as stark in other areas. Take biodiversity.

This is the Foreign Minister for Britain speaking. I would say, `Take heed, the environment minister for Australia.' He continued:

Some people still say that the extinction of plant and animal species is a natural process. So it is. But as the malign result of human activity it is now occurring at up to a thousand times the natural rate. Well over a tenth of the plant species known to man are at risk of extinction. And that isn't just a tragedy for those who enjoy nature. It should concern anyone who cares about our health. A quarter of all prescription drugs are derived from plants. Drugs derived from tropical forest plants are worth USD25 billion a year.

He went on, outlining the problems with water and other issues around the world:

Each one of these issues is a slow-moving menace with the momentum of a super-tanker bearing down on us. And I haven't even got onto the loss of soil and spreading deserts, the state of the world's fish stocks, the forests, the coral reefs or the ozone layer.

He went on to say about the Climate Change Challenge Fund:

By working with business, the environmental movement and developing countries—

heed this; this is the British government, the Foreign Secretary speaking. Where is Senator Hill? Could he ever utter such a line?—

we can break the myth of conflict between the green agenda and the growth agenda. I want British business to lead the way in showing that what is good for the environment can also alleviate poverty—it is not just a rich man's luxury.

He then announced a series of measures that Britain is taking:

The authorities in Peking, for example, tell us that they would welcome British expertise in encouraging the use of gas rather than coal for heating and cooking—

that is step 1—

And a consortium led by a British company, The Solar Century, is negotiating in China to build the world's largest factory to make solar panels.

So Britain is building, in conjunction with Chinese expertise, the world's biggest factory in the Asian region, while the Australian government is penalising our solar industry. What an extraordinary state of affairs. What a shocking situation. What perverse policy, that the Howard government should be taxing the solar industry as never before, while putting hundreds of millions into the dirty old fossil fuel industries as never before—while the British government is out there with business leaders and environmentalists, leading the world and taking our markets to the north, taking jobs from Australians.

Of course, in a global economy, that is their right. Thank goodness somebody has the enlightenment to do what Senator Hill and John Howard cannot do. I intend to hammer this matter, because they are failing Australia. They are failing the clean green future that this nation should have, and they are failing to produce thousands of jobs—and economic prosperity, to boot—while they fail on the environmental questions. Mr Cook ended with a quote from Kennedy:

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment . . . We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world—or to make it the last.

The Howard government seems to be hell-bent on the latter. We Greens are going to fight for the former.